Tackling Industrial AI’s Last Mile Problem: Our Investment in Arrakis
Most AI investment so far has gone to workers who sit behind a desk, but those who run physical operations have seen little of it. This is not for lack of ambition - industrial companies want to deploy AI. However, they run on decades-old software, fragmented systems, and workflows held together by manual work and unstructured data. In that environment, most AI projects never reach production: less than 10% of enterprises have moved agents into production at scale.
The major hurdle isn't the technology, but everything around it: data, governance, integration, process intelligence, and the ability to design the right solution. This is where a one-size-fits-all approach just won't work, AI initiatives stall out, and companies leave millions on the table.
Arrakis was built for this last mile, serving enterprises in industries like aerospace and defense, logistics, energy, and manufacturing, where systems are fragmented, compliance is essential, and getting it right is the only option. Arrakis takes a full-stack approach: forward-deployed engineers working as an extension of customers' teams, combined with a model-agnostic, sovereign AI platform and an applied AI team that tunes models on each company's operational corpus. NYSE-listed customers across the energy, logistics, and industrial sectors are already seeing measurable impact, including a 90% reduction in procurement cycle times and increased real-time visibility into manual operational and financial processes.
Arrakis was founded by Rafael Quintanilla, who previously worked at Accel, investing in companies in the defense and enterprise software spaces such as Cambridge Aerospace and Omnea. At Arrakis, he's joined by co-founders Haroun Beltaifa, Romain Fouilland, Michael Galkov and Chester Thompson, along with a strong founding team who bring experience from ASML, Datadog, ElevenLabs, KKR, Palantir, Revolut and Uber. Today, as Arrakis comes out of stealth with $38M in funding, we're pleased to be partnering with Rafael in his role as a founder alongside the team at Blossom Capital.
One of Arrakis' key advantages is that its team understands what it takes to drive enterprise transformation. They deploy agents into existing systems - avoiding the need for multiyear migrations - and have built for rigorous compliance and security standards from day one. Sovereignty is a cornerstone of their approach: customer data and IP stay with the customer and are never used for third-party model training. By tying a significant portion of fees to customer outcomes, Arrakis’ pricing also fits the value delivered. In short, Arrakis solves for outcomes, sovereignty, and cost. It's no surprise that, just six months after launching, they've already secured significant customer demand across eight countries, including the US.
After working alongside Rafael for years, we're looking forward to partnering with him on this new endeavor. Welcome to the Accel family, Arrakis!
